variance
by naggingGargoyle
Summary: Amethyst and Pearl and defects.


**Warning** for fantasy space rock racism/ableism/classism mishmash.

* * *

You do feel better after Peridot's surprisingly sincere apology, and it's not that you really _need to talk_ or anything, but you find Pearl alone in the shed surrounded by all the biggest tools, so, you think, might as well.

"Hey, Pearl," you say, more hesitantly than you should. "Do you think…"

"Hm?" Pearl glances up from the hunk of metal she's welding other hunks of metal onto, wiping her forehead with a gloved hand and just making it greasier.

You feel an overwhelming sense of self-consciousness. What the hell are you doing? You should be working on something productive. Better yet, you should be rolling around in some garbage. You definitely shouldn't be feeling like shit over something a triangular nerd said to you, and already apologized for.

"Nah, forget it," you say, and Pearl turns back to her conjoined hunks of metal.

.

You go to the Kindergarten and sit down in your wimpy little ground-level hole. Because it's A. your favorite place to feel miserable; and B. exactly the right place to feel miserable about being born out of a wimpy little ground-level hole, specifically.

You've never thought much about the fact that yours is the only hole directly adjacent to the ground, or the fact that when you emerged, all the others were already empty. It was just the way things were. It's not like you had anything to compare it to.

But you always did… you've always had… feelings, about your body. You never understood why Pearl and Garnet didn't love shapeshifting the way you do. It's always felt so good, so freeing, to be able to be whatever you want, something different, something _else_.

Maybe now you know why. Maybe, if there's something _defective_ about you, then –

"Amethyst." You turn around. Pearl is standing outside your hole, stooping low to fit her head in. Of course she is. She comes in and folds herself up next to you, knees and elbows sticking out everywhere. "Hi."

You grunt in response. "How'd you find me?" you ask her.

She huffs. "It was amazingly easy," she says arrogantly. "Every time you want to brood, you come to this horrible place."

"Wouldn't _you_ go back to your home to brood if you could?" you mumble sullenly.

Pearl is silent for a second. You'd say she tenses up a little, if it were possible for Pearl to be any tenser than she is all the time, always. "No," Pearl says, clipped and short and final. Then she adds, softer, "I really wouldn't."

You sit in uneasy silence for a while, looking at the old familiar dirt rather than at Pearl. But you get bored of that pretty quickly. You've always been really bad at brooding. "Do you think there's something wrong with me?" you blurt out. "Am I... really fucked up somehow? Like, inside. In my gem."

Pearl grimaces, pulling her limbs tighter into herself. She looks extremely uncomfortable, maybe even more than she does at buffets. "You know," she says, voice weird and halting, "pearls are supposed to be round."

"Huh?" you say eloquently. "Uh. Yeah. I guess."

She looks at the wall. "All the well-made, most valuable pearls are round." She lifts a single finger and taps the gem on her forehead, and glances at you. You feel something heavy settle in your stomach. Suddenly you remember that day the huge hand-ship landed, the things that Jasper said before she captured all of you.

Pearl has dropped her hands to her lap and is wringing them expertly. "Mine is not round," she says.

At that moment she looks annoyingly vulnerable, and you feel your insecurity turn into anger. You really, really, suck at brooding. "So what!" you say, jumping to your feet. "Who gives a shit what those Homeworld fucks think a _valuable_ pearl should look like? So you're tall and weird. That's, like, your only good quality, anyway!"

Pearl smiles, and then she laughs, and then she tries to stand up and bumps her head on the ceiling and sits back down again. "Right," she says. "And you're small and loud, and those are… _not_ your best qualities, but not remotely your worst ones, either."

You stretch your arms over your head for a bit and sit down, a little closer to Pearl. "You know," you say, bumping Pearl's knee with yours. She doesn't bump back, but also doesn't move away. "I think Peridot has a crush on me."

"She _what!_ " Pearl yelps. She's blushing bright, bright blue. You cackle.

"I mean, she told me I'm defective and fucking geometrically wrong, but." You shrug. "Did you see how she fell on me, all romcom style? That was hilarious."

"Amethyst, you can't have a… a… _romantic_ _comedic_ relationship with the enemy!" Parl says, utterly horrified.

You stare at her for a moment. She's still blushing, and there's an indignant little frown between her eyebrows. You start laughing out loud.

"It's not funny!" she insists. You wrap your arms around your stomach, bending over a little. "Amethyst! Aren't you supposed to be _brooding_!"

She sits stiffly next to you as you laugh your guts out. It's a bit disproportionate to the actual humor of the situation, but you can never resist an indignant Pearl.

"Thanks, Pearl," you huff when you finally manage to catch your breath. You wipe off a tear and bump her knee again. "That kinda helped."

Pearl looks away, cheeks still blue, and gently touches your knee, too. "You're welcome." She reaches her hand up and touches the dirt ceiling without even having to extend her arm all the way. "Can we get out of here now?" she asks. "I'm too big for this place."

"Honestly?" you say, surveying the space that used to be your home for such a long time from end to end. "Me too."

Pearl bumps her head again on the way out, and you just really do feel so much _better_ about yourself.


End file.
